Congratulations to Barry Larkin on being elected today to the Hall of Fame. Here’s an excerpt from a bit I wrote about Barry back in 2009…

“If Cal Ripken redefined the shortstop position, Barry Larkin took it mainstream. He wore the white polyester uniform with dual red-racing stripes down the legs; his #11 wristbands ran from the bottom of his black glove halfway up his arm. He could just as easily flatten a catcher with the acceleration of a Tomahawk Missile (Mike Heath comes to mind) as turn a perfect pivot on a double play, seeming to hover like a toy glider above the outstretched arms of an incoming baserunner, his feet just a little too large for his jackrabbit legs.

“When finally elected as a starter to the All-Star Game in 1995, he ran out to his position and performed a flawless back-flip, because that’s what Ozzie Smith always used to do. The torch had been passed.

“He was cocky in a way that made other kids want to be him, to chomp bubblegum and wear their batting gloves in their back pocket. He was smooth in a way that could only have been considered smooth in the early-nineties…pre-grunge, pre-strike, pre-world-wide web…when high-fives weren’t just cool, they were choreographed.”

Congrats to one of my baseball heroes.

This is me reading from the book:

Both filmed Thursday, December 8 at Barnhill’s in Winston-Salem.